Our Process
We formulate it. We prove it. We hand you the formula and walk you into production.
The Cosmetic Formulary is a formulation house. We are not a contract manufacturer and we do not run your production. We do something harder to buy: we develop the chemistry, prove it in the lab, hand you ownership of it, and then navigate you through the manufacturer relationship so the thing that ships is the thing we made.
Most founders lose their product somewhere between a promising bench sample and a first production run. The formula gets substituted, the fill house changes a preservative, the component does not seat, the testing comes back and nobody knows what to do with it. That gap is where brands die. Closing that gap is our product.
1. Brief
You tell us what you are trying to build and who it is for. Texture, claims, actives, price point, market, timeline. If you have a benchmark product you love, we take it apart. Every project starts with a written brief so there is one version of the truth.
2. Formulation
We build the formula from scratch in our lab. Not a stock base with your fragrance dropped in. Real bench work, real iterations, real reasoning about why each raw material is in there and at what percentage. You get samples, you give notes, we revise. This repeats until it is right.
3. Validation
A formula nobody tested is a liability, not an asset. We run stability, compatibility with your chosen component, pH and viscosity over time, and preservative efficacy. If your product makes a drug claim, sun protection especially, we tell you exactly what that costs and what it obligates you to before you commit, not after.
4. Packaging
The component is part of the formula. A cream that is stable in glass can fail in a PET jar. We select and test the packaging against the actual product, not in theory, and we source it. Browse the catalog to see what we keep on hand.
5. Routing and Navigation
This is the part nobody else gives you. We match your formula and your volume to the right manufacturer. Not the one who pays for referrals. The one whose equipment, minimums and compliance posture actually fit what we built. Then we stay in it: we transfer the formula and the process, we speak chemist to chemist with their lab, we review the first production batch against our own test data, and we tell you when something is off before you have paid for a pallet of it.
You own the formula. You own the relationship. We are the one in the room who reads the certificate of analysis and knows what it should say.
What you walk away with
- A finished, tested formula that belongs to you
- The full master batch record and process instructions
- Stability, compatibility and preservative efficacy data
- Component specifications and sourcing
- A matched manufacturer and a managed transfer into production
Start with the brief. It takes about ten minutes and it is the fastest way for us to tell you whether we can build what you are picturing.